Maureen Howard in a 1980 New York Times book review calls Innocent Blood "a novel clear and true . .

. a quest for personal identity, of irrational love and strain of duty between parents and children, husband and wife." Inspired by a newspaper account which James read as a consequence of the Children's Act of 1975, which permitted adopted children eighteen years or older to know the identity of their real parents, Innocent Blood explores one of the worst possible situations. In this story, an insecure but independent-minded eighteen-year-old Philippa Rose Palfrey learns that her father was a rapist and her mother a child murderer.

As Philippa pursues her search for identity, she becomes acquainted with a side of London she never knew in the elegant suburban surroundings in which she was brought up by the Palfreys. She discovers the complexities of love and forgiveness, and she experiences...